31–40 of 52 posts
I'm just surprised that there's that much revenue in youtube videos
I have the feeling the author is elevating presentation over content. His definition of terrible is different than mine. I mean, I think "Transformers 3: Pixels Making Grinding Noises" has insanely great production value, and made a bajillion dollars, but honestly I'd rather watch two hours of Jenna Marbles videos, and I don't even like Jenna Marbles all that much.
Then again, he's also the media strategist behind Tucker Max[1] and the Director of Marketing for American Apparel, so it doesn't exactly surprise me that his cultural taste is not in line with the Youtube viewer population, or anything outside of mainstream Hollywood-esque production style and content, with a pinch of misogyny.
I would similar expect that he would also not like sxephil or pantlessknights, but they are not in the title of his article. And I think it's ok if someone like him just doesn't "get" Youtube, user-generated content, or cats on the Internet.
0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Holiday 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_Max
We are stupid.
The content is therefore stupid.
It has to play to us. It plays to what we want.
This isn't hard.
I have the feeling the author is elevating presentation over content. His definition of terrible is different than mine. I mean, I think "Transformers 3: Pixels Making Grinding Noises" has insanely great production value, and made a bajillion dollars, but honestly I'd rather watch two hours of Jenna Marbles videos, and I don't even like Jenna Marbles all that much.
The author assumes that there is a linear relationship between the amount of money that a creator has at their disposal and the resulting "production quality". So, once Jenna Marbles starts making some real bank, out come the camera crews and director and post-production effects and... No. There is no path from Jenna Marbles to the traditional kind of television that the author is used to. They're just...different. J…
> "but it's still unclear exactly how they're going to get there." Technology is a good bet. Camera technology as well as cost has come down by orders of magnitude in recent years - the Canon 5D Mark II was the turning point (the first DSLR capable of shooting 1080p video at acceptable frame rates), but we're way beyond that now. And we're not talking about "making cameras cheaper so anyone can throw one on a tripod…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author is Ryan Holiday, who makes a nice side living as a professional rage-click generator. It's likely that his only purpose with this post is to piss off thousands of Jenna Marbles fans so that they will come post angry comments (and receive ad impressions).
Please, I have written pretty extensively about the problems with the ad impressions model--I think it's the root of the YT issue and most the low quality blogging we see. I don't get paid by the pageview and if I did, it would be an inconsequential part of my annual income at this point. I write columns about ideas I find interesting. If I wanted pageviews I'd probably publish it somewhere other than the Observer
I have the feeling the author is elevating presentation over content. His definition of terrible is different than mine. I mean, I think "Transformers 3: Pixels Making Grinding Noises" has insanely great production value, and made a bajillion dollars, but honestly I'd rather watch two hours of Jenna Marbles videos, and I don't even like Jenna Marbles all that much.
There is an obvious blind spot relating to narrowcasting in both your examples. Both hollywood action sequels and youtube videos have the hidden assumption that they're the dominant form of media, they are our culture, everyone participates, they're what makes us, us. The national pastime, or whatever. Insinuating that they're not would get a extremely harsh reaction from those socialized to respond that they are. Kinda like religion but I'm tryin to keep on topic.
In both examples, 99% of the population won't watch either for free. You can be rejected by 99.75% of the US population yet get a youtube gold plaque for 1 million views. Given those real world facts, its no great surprise that the Venn diagram of a microscopic fraction of the US population who are Jenna fans does not have much coincidental overlap with the small and shrinking fraction of the US population who watch hollywood movies.
If your advertising message is you're the best individual example of the self described dominant form of modern media, admitting the truth that no one in the general population watches, even for free or near free, would really screw up the message.
Its a fun self awareness hack to evaluate someones worldview by asking them what percentage of the US population watches "Survivor" for example. Strongly bimodal, with the wrong answer being "almost everyone because it defines modern pop culture" and the right answer being "almost no one".
Another peculiar observation is I can walk down the street and notice that plenty of young men admire the young ladies with no hollywood production values at all
The author assumes that there is a linear relationship between the amount of money that a creator has at their disposal and the resulting "production quality". So, once Jenna Marbles starts making some real bank, out come the camera crews and director and post-production effects and... No. There is no path from Jenna Marbles to the traditional kind of television that the author is used to. They're just...different. J…
I think what you're really saying here is that these current YouTube stars will not make the jump from their current content to TV-ready content. But they do play an important role in creating the ecosystem, bringing the viewers, and showing that there is a market for content through this distribution medium. Hopefully that will make people more willing to drop the money on a good pilot, but it won't be the current g…
And a corollary: genre is distinct from delivery mechanism. "House of Cards" is a TV show and Jenna Marbles videos are (for lack of a better term) YouTube-style videos, even though both are delivered via the Internet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please, I have written pretty extensively about the problems with the ad impressions model--I think it's the root of the YT issue and most the low quality blogging we see. I don't get paid by the pageview and if I did, it would be an inconsequential part of my annual income at this point. I write columns about ideas I find interesting. If I wanted pageviews I'd probably publish it somewhere other than the Observer
Wait, are you actually offended that someone accused you of manipulating popular media for personal gain?